I am awkward. I’m not, like, Asperger’s awkward, but I’m awkward enough that the idea of a first date causes an actual physical reaction in me, akin to sucking on a lemon. The main reason I have never tried internet dating is that it would require a first meeting and I can’t think of anything more uncomfortable and unpleasant than that experience.

So perhaps, in hindsight, speed dating was a bad idea. But it appealed to me because it minimizes the length of awkward face time. If it’s bad, it’s only bad for a few minutes; then it’s over. There is no more than 4 minutes of awkward silence, there is no awkward moment while it’s decided who should pay the bill. There’s not enough time to get drunk enough to accidentally wake up in a stranger’s bed the next morning and realize you got wasted because the your date sucked. And it’s a quantity over quality situation: you meet a bunch of people in a short amount of time, so basically it’s all based on physical attraction and the confirmation that neither party has a terrible stutter. Golden.

Every person, guy and girl, got an index card and wore a name tag with a number on it. At the end of the night you turn in an index card with your number and email address on it, and the number of any person you met that you liked. If that person put your number on his card, then bingo, you have a match, and you are each emailed with the other person’s info.

I felt pretty good once I got there. I was worried I would be the proverbial fat kid in the room, but I was definitely one of the cuter people in attendance. (As luck would have it, I was having a cute day.) One thing I have going for me when it comes to talking to guys is that I’m a hockey fan, and I’m a real hockey fan, not just a girl who says she’s a fan of a sport to impress a guy. Of course not every guy likes hockey (idiots) but most guys have a basic understanding of all the major sports and basic knowledge of the teams and the major stars. Also, I essentially work for the Ringling Brothers Circus now, and the office is decorated with crazy circus shit, including a stuffed gorilla that used to perform in the circus for 30 odd years and now resides in a glass case on the 5th floor. Quirky and fun, no? The way I saw it, those two topics should provide enough conversation to fill 4 minutes once the requisite where-are-you-from, what-do-you-dos were out of the way.

The first guy was a very nice gentlemen, but he was from India, so he didn’t know anything about hockey. Then I moved onto the circus. He wasn’t familiar with that, either. He was a network engineer and had only been in America for a year. I’m generally not attracted to that particular ethnicity. I’m not racist. It’s kind of like how I have no attraction to red haired men. Just not my type. Also not my type: Asian guys and Hispanic guys. So sue me.

The next guy was also from India, recently moved to America, and was a network engineer. The one after that was from India, recently moved to America, and was a software developer. And so on and so forth. It was like a fucking Punjabi assembly line. I was seriously starting to think I was being punked.

So it would seem.

I got two Hispanic guys, who were best friends, both recently moved here from Puerto Rico. One was about 5’1, which, I think it goes without saying, is a deal breaker. His buddy had a ponytail with all the hair under the ponytail shaved off. Also a deal breaker. Turns out guys who grew up in Puerto Rico also have limited interest in hockey, and apparently, Puerto Rico isn’t a stop on the circus tour.

One guy was really sweet but he was former military, which in my experience, I just don’t mesh well with. He came prepared with a written set of questions. I don’t believe we got past his first question, which was, dog or cat person. I said dog, obviously and he said cat and then launched into that bullshit monologue that a lot of cat people always spout about how cats make you earn their love and their general disagreeable nature and ungratefulness is somehow charming. Just admit you like cats because dogs take a lot more work and you’re just too fucking lazy to walk an animal twice a day.

One guy was not even remotely attractive but said he was a hockey fan. He asked me what team I liked, which I found to be kind of offensive. Hello, the only team in the area is the Caps. You support your home team. I asked him who he liked and he said the Kings, the Caps, and the Devils. Um, no. You can’t pick three teams, kind of like you can’t have three wives.

Another guy said he was big into hockey and his favorite team is the Pittsburgh Penguins. To which I replied, well, it was nice meeting you, but I’m a Caps fan, so this conversation is clearly over. He thought I was joking. He was wrong. There are some principles I just can’t compromise on, some evils which cannot be condoned.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping to meet a man who was a cross between Alexander Skarsgard and Ryan Gosling with a dry wit, a rich family and an English degree, so perhaps I was setting the bar too high. But I thought there would be at least one person I was moderately attracted to. Actually, I thought there would be one guy I liked and I would turn in my card and he would turn in his and my number would not be on it. I was expecting the event to be soul crushing in a putting my self esteem through a meat grinder kind of way. Instead I didn’t even bother turning in my card. I also pretended to be a smoker to have an excuse to go outside and sneak out before the event was over.

So, needless to say, it was a bust. However, my best friend Kim had predicted that at least one guy would make a crass, carpet/drapes redhead comment,and at least every guy I talked to had the decency to keep those to himself. You know it was a great night when not being subjected to an offensive sexual joke is the highlight of your evening. Score one for me.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Brittani and her roommates played host to a 21 year old couch surfer from England. If you’re not familiar with couch surfing, check out the website for more info. Being an only child and therefore being raised by the parents of an only child, this practice strikes me as astonishingly dangerous, likely to end in one of two outcomes: your bones as wind chimes, or your skin as lampshades. Possibly both. But I understand the theory behind couch surfing, because traveling is expensive and no one knows a place better than the locals and we are the world, blah blah, blah. Just check references so you don’t end up in Hostel situation, is all I’m saying.

The 21 year old, Nick, had a sort of Michael Cera-esque, charmingly awkward at the age of 21 but likely to be flat out bird faced and chicken-legged by the age of 26, thing going on. Brittani and I took Nick to Adams Morgan and during the car ride, he had some words of wisdom:

“There are a lot of hipsters in America, but not real hipsters. The ones that think they’re hipsters really aren’t. It the ones that don’t know they’re hipsters that are actual hipsters, in the real sense of the world.”

“That group of shirtless black men looks rather dodgy. We should keep driving.”

“I’ve noticed that black people love McDonald’s.”

Then Nick decided it was time to get serious about his drinking and took a bunch of shots, then got mad at me because he thought I was purposely not getting as drunk as he was (even though we had the same amount to drink). It’s not my fault those British wankers can’t handle their liquor.

As we all know, I’m a huge Washington Capitals fan, and today is the 27th birthday of my hockey boyfriend #2, Brooks Laich (hockey boyfriend #1 is Alex Semin, but there is very little space in my heart between 1 and 2 in this case). Besides being an awesome hockey player who had his first hat trick this past season, Brooks has a reputation for being an insanely good guy.

Case in point: the same night that the Caps suffered a loss in game 7 of the first round of playoffs, knocking them out of the race for the Stanley Cup, Brooks spotted a car with a flat tire on the side of the highway on his way home from the game and stopped and changed the tire for the driver and her daughter. In his suit (the guys wear suits before and after the games). I mean, Christ. It’s one thing to be a good samaritan, but it’s a whole other animal to be one after suffering a heartbreaking, soul-crushing, early-playoff exit such as the one the Caps suffered that night. So today, on his birthday, we salute Brooks Laich, because he’s awesome.

The hotness.

Oh, and did I mention he’s super, super hot? There is a stereotype that all hockey players are toothless, smashed-nose brutes.

Continued hotness.

Brooks Laich is clearly proof that the stereotype does not always apply.

The man knows how to wear a suit.

Happy birthday Brooks!

*Also, I should note that my birthday was yesterday, and if the proximity of our birthdays is not proof that Brooks and I belong together, then I don’t know what is.

The other night, while flipping through the channels, I caught about 2 minutes of the MTV show True Life. This episode’s topic was, “I’m Addicted to Porn,” and as you can imagine, the men featured in it were real winners.

Brandon is 26, addicted to porn, and lives with his grandma. He feels that his porn addiction is hampering his possibility of a relationship with a woman because porn allows him to enjoy women without dealing with all the drama that comes with them. (I’m figuring he favors straight-up, get right to it, fucking-porn, as opposed to porn that attempts a plot; just a guess.) And by “enjoy women,” he means, “enjoy his own hand.”

Yes, Brandon...your addiction to porn is the reason you can't find a good woman.

The reason I’m telling you all this is not to discuss what a loser Brandon is, because really, Brandon being a loser was already implicit when he not only became addicted to porn, but went on MTV to tell the world about it. No, I’m telling you this because the few minutes I spent watching Brandon left me with this memorable quote:

“One of my favorite things to do is smoke cigars while I watch porno. Keep it luxurious.”

Luxurious and classy.

Brandon with his cigar. You don't even want to know where he put that cigar before he smoked it.

A couple of weeks ago was National Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day. I feel like I really don’t even need to write about this, because I think it goes without saying how I felt about it. I don’t care if it’s a nationally sanctioned day or not; unless you work in childcare, I don’t want to see your kid at work. (And if I am working in child care, go ahead and prepare for the End of Days because hell has officially frozen over and it’s all going downhill from that point.)

Now, when I was a kid, the idea behind taking your kid to work on take your kid to work day was to show your child what mommy or daddy does to bring home the bacon, and to illustrate the concept that money doesn’t grow on trees and your parents have to actually do something day in and day out to keep you stocked up on food, shelter, and toys. It was supposed to be interesting in that you were getting to see your parents in a way and in an environment that you never really have access to otherwise, but it wasn’t exactly fun unless your parents happened to do something insanely cool for a living. But I’m old, and apparently times have changed, because National Take Your Kid to Work Day was a fucking circus at my temp job.

Instead of the kids following their parents around and seeing what they actually do at their jobs, the kids were put into groups and did activities all day long, such as, an informative trip to the Apple Store and a gymnastics hour. Topper Shutt, a local weatherman, came and did a presentation on meterology, which would make sense if the place I’m temping at had anything even remotely to do with that field of study, but it doesn’t. Also, on a side note, Topper is insanely short. Like, 5’5, tops. The kids all got goodie bags to take home, including a CD of their adventures that day and a certificate (acknowledging that they learned what, I don’t know). A shit ton of money was spent on the goodie bags and all kinds of food for the kids, and besides my general dislike of children, it just seems to me that entertaining the kids all day isn’t really in line with the original intent of the day. However, on the official website for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, Barbie is the sponsor, so…yeah. Perhaps there is some evil genius in convincing kids that work is a place where you go everyday to be entertained and fed, because maybe they will operate under that illusion happily until they actually get a job and be excited to get one because they have high hopes for how fun it will be. But it’s just delaying the inevitable letdown that 90% of Americans experience when they realize that unless you are lucky enough to get your dream job and get paid well for it, work bites.

But you know something that made work bite even more than usual for me that day? The presence of swarming children. They were INSANELY loud. I would be standing waiting for the elevator, no kids in sight, but I could hear the sounds of their shrills. They were like termites; it was coming through the walls. Also, I got on an elevator once after a group of them stepped out and it smelled like fart. Then the elevator stopped on the next floor with only me on it, so the people coming on probably thought I was the one that farted.